[Solved] Disappearing Account

[BearPup]

I have 4 separate email accounts, and have setup individual folders for each account. However one of the accounts (@yahoo.com) disappears from the folder pane, i.e., it once was displayed but is no longer displayed in the folder pane. And yet when I click on the "Show Account Settings" for the other three accounts that are displayed, the @yahoo.com account info is all there, it just won't display!

Any help and suggestions greatly appreciated.
Regards,
BearPup

[Robert2]

I have the same problem. I have 5 different accounts. Only 2 are showing (in bold characters) in the folder pane. I never could find out why some are shown, and others are not. I also never could get any answer to this…

[Moonchild]

Under View -> Folders, make sure to select "All" and not "Unified", "Unread", "Recent" or other choices that will effectively filter your display.

[Robert2]

Under View -> Folders, I had selected "Unified". I changed this to "All". Same problem as before. Only 2 accounts are shown in bold characters (they were just moved to the top of the list).

[BearPup]

So, I reinstalled FossaMail in case it was a bad installation that was causing the problem. This time it initially showed all 4 accounts. But when I closed and re-opened the program, while all 4 accounts were initially showing, two of the four were missing folders and their associated files. I'm wondering if there is some sort of limit on the number of folders that is causing the problem. Admittedly its a shot in the dark, but maybe it triggers a memory for someone....

[BearPup]

An UPDATE to my last posting. The two accounts that weren't showing all their folders are IMAP accounts, and simply clicking on the Inbox of each account caused the account to "reopen" and "re-read" the folder structure and all was restored to normal. I have since restructured the folders in each account, and so far all has worked as it should, i.e., folders and accounts have stopped disappearing for at least the short term.

I only wish I had more confidence that whatever the cause of the disappearing accounts and folders was, it was solved in some way that the situation wouldn't re-occur. For now I keep backing up the program on an almost daily schedule using Hekasoft Backup and Restore (Hekasoft.it) A multifaceted, freeware program it back ups Firefox, Thunderbird and all their derivatives; it also optimizes many of the programs, and allows for migrating of programs. I used it to migrate my Thunderbird accounts and thousands of stored emails over to FossaMail in a matter of minutes, not hours. In the interest of full disclosure, I do Beta testing for Hekasoft; there is no compensation provided for any of my work or 'promotion' of the program. I'm just appreciative of having one program that backups all my internet applications in very short order.

[Moonchild]

If the client can't connect to the IMAP server, it won't be able to show your folder structure as IMAP keeps everything on the server.
The problem would therefore not necessarily be the folders, but rather the connection - either your account setting to not automatically log in, or some connectivity issue for Fossamail (potentially caused by third party software like firewalls or internet security software).

[BearPup]

Hmm. That might explain it. The accounts that disappeared either in whole or in part were IMAP, and my Server Settings for all accounts is on manual - I click on the 'Get All Mail' button to check mail, its not checked or downloaded automatically or at preset intervals. The only problem with that as the cause is that if / when it happens, and an entire account is missing from the Folder view, I don't know of anyway to reestablish it short of reinstalling FossaMail from the last backup I have; losing whatever may have transpired since the last backup.

[Moonchild]

IMAP is inherently an on-line service. If you want to use IMAP, you can't use offline mode with manual checking. The two are mutually exclusive in how they work.
So, you have to either use POP3 for those accounts to manually check, or you have to make sure they automatically connect whenever you start the client.

[BearPup]

Assuming that this is the cause, it seems that FossaMail is more 'sensitive' to this than Thunderbird is, as its never happened with Thunderbird. That being said, I'm inclined to use FossaMail as its a 64 Bit application and is noticeably faster than Thunderbird. So for now, I've changed FossaMail's settings to check for messages on start-up for all accounts, and I'll see how that works.

Regardless, thanks for your help.

[Robert2]

My 5 accounts all automatically connect whenever I start Fossamail (or Thunderbird for that matter).
Of the only 2 accounts that are showing in the Folders pane, one is IMAP, the other is POP.
These 2 accounts are shown in bold characters. I cannot remove them from the display within the Folders pane.
My “Inbox” has only 2 subfolders. They are dedicated to the 2 accounts shown in bold characters.
I never could fathom out why these 2 accounts are displaying in bold characters, and why they are the only ones to be displaying in the Folders pane… Both accounts are set up in the same way as the other accounts.

Note that this is not something specific to Fossamail. It happened in Thunderbird too.

[BearPup]

Some troubleshooting questions: are there any other programs or functions that don't seem quite right? How long have these behaviors been present? Have you ever run a Systems File Check?

[Robert2]

My system is working perfectly (64bit Windows 8.1 Update 1).

Not surprisingly, this kind of problem with the accounts was already present in Thunderbird. It was already happening in Windows XP (I jumped from XP to 8)!

[BearPup]

@Robert2: try this - run the System File Checker, like this:
1. Right Click on your desktop.
2. Select Command Prompt.
3. When that opens a command prompt, enter the command, "SFC \Scannow" (without the quotation marks), and press the Enter button.

It'll take about 15 minutes to run through the file check, at the end it'll tell you that everything is fine, or that it found corrupt system files and that it repaired those files, or that it found corrupt system files and couldn't repair those. Let me know what you find.

Regards,
BearPup

[Robert2]

I ran “SFC /SCANNOW” as suggested. It took 7 minutes (my system is a fast system on a SSD). “SFC /SCANNOW” found nothing wrong at all.

[BearPup]

Well that's better than my system! I got the bad result, "Found corrupt files but was unable to fix them", and I ran it three times. My next suggestion is to backup all your emails and try reinstalling one of the clients and see if that helps. Reinstallation and setting the client to auto on at sign-on seems to have done the trick for me.

[BearPup]

UPDATE: Its been discovered that my computer may have fallen victim to a rogue program that may well have been responsible for a number of problems, including 'failing' a SFC sweep. I am currently 'rebuilding' my computer with known good copies (fresh, clean downloads) of all my programs. One of the programs flagged as problematical was 360Amigo, which I had had on all my computers going back several years, including the two that have had FossaMail on them. Having removed that program, and restored FossaMail from Thunderbird via HekaSoft's Backup and Restore (and migration) program, I now have a working copy of FossaMail with all my bookmarks, stored messages, and settings migrated over from Thunderbird. I've used FossaMail as my default email client and everything has worked smoothly, including moving messages to and around different folders, and through a complete reinstall. So whether it was shifting to automatic login or getting rid of an alleged rogue program (the jury is still out on that one), FossaMail now seems to be working smoothly (I've not even reinstalled Thunderbird).

[Moonchild]

Thanks for the update and progress!
I'll assume this has solved the issue for you.